Wrestling
I coached high school track and field for forty years. And while track and Cross Country were my “primary sports”, for many of those years I coached wrestling as well. I started the middle school wrestling program at Watkins Middle School, forty kids on a tiny, hard old mat in the middle of an elementary gym. We had to take shifts wrestling, with kids doing pushups and sit-ups on the gym floor waiting for a chance to practice on a corner of the mat.
And I couldn’t teach throws, when a wrestler would pick up their opponent and (carefully) put them down on the mat. The “postage stamp” we were wrestling on was too hard. In today’s world of lawsuits we never would wrestled on that mat, but back in the mid 1980’s it’s what we had. And we had a lot of fun.
In those years there wasn’t a “little kids” wrestling program. The eighth graders who stepped on our “postage stamp” were almost all wrestling for the first time. And for many of them, their only exposure to “wrestling” was “professional wrestling” they saw on television. They came to their first wrestling practice looking for the ropes and the turnbuckles, what they saw on TV.
Big Time Wrestling
Professional wrestling has been around for a very long time. When my Dad went to work in Dayton at WLW-D television station (now WDTN) in 1962, there was still the big “warehouse” area in the back of the station with a full sized ring. The travelling “Big Time Wrestling” show would come through town and broadcast “live from the studio”. It was the travelling carnival of television.
There isn’t much in common between “professional” wrestling and the kind of wrestling we did in middle school. Professional wrestling is a carefully scripted performance, with the wrestler/actors knowing their opponent’s next move and how they should react for the greatest spectator excitement. It has to be. Jumping from five or six feet up in the air and landing on someone, even on a springy mat, would break ribs, crush organs, and make for a very short career. Hitting someone with a folding chair in the real world is just short of assault with a deadly weapon. When you know things “went wrong” is when someone actually gets hurt.
On Steroids
Today the spectacle of professional wrestling is taken to the extreme. It’s called World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), and it’s not just the wrestling-performance. It’s an entire drama – from entering the arena, music blaring and special effects going off, to “non-ring” fights between managers, girlfriends, and even the guest celebrities. In 2007, Pre-Presidential Donald Trump got to be “in the ring'” right after he body slammed WWE President Vince McMahon on the sidelines (WWE). It’s the “good guys” versus the “bad guys”. The good guys are victimized all season by the cheating bad guys – but usually come back to win at the end of the season.
For the audience it is a time of suspended disbelief. Sure, if someone did that “eye-gouge” or “flying pancake” in the real world, ambulances and policemen would arrive on the scene. Everyone knows there’s a script, but no one knows what the preordained outcome is. So it’s a show, a performance. We can cheer on the “good guys” and lustily boo the “bad ones”.
Trump
Donald Trump learned a lot from his friend, WWE President Vince McMahon. He got so much from him, that he appointed Vince’s wife Linda as Administrator of the Small Business Administration. Trump learned the art of spectacle and suspended disbelief. He understood the clear “black and white, good versus bad” that attracts WWE’s audience. And critical to understanding his actions today, Donald Trump learned that the “good guys” are always victims, waiting to “win” at the end of the season.
It may come with some surprise, but Saturday night I watched the entire Trump Rally in Valdosta, Georgia. The President was there to support the Republican candidates for Senate in the January (not June) 5th runoff. But the rally really wasn’t about that. For over one hundred minutes, so long that even Fox News cut him off for Judge Jeanine; Donald Trump performed exactly as he learned from WWE.
Trump entered to his “theme song” – God Bless the USA! He was the “good guy”, the victim cheated in the biggest “ring” of all. He complained about the “refs”, the Republican leadership of Georgia who refused to overturn the election. The President decried his cheating opponent, the Democrats, with their “suitcases” full of ballots and signatures from the dead. And he didn’t forget to talk about the “other” bad guys outside the ring, the media. There was the “traditional boo and flip off” the press section moment. And in the end, he promised that “next season” he will come back to avenge his loss.
Next Season
Democrats are constantly amazed that the President can stand in front of an adoring crowd (“WE LOVE YOU” was one on the chants) and tell outright lies for hours. It’s easy to “assume” that the folks there are stupid, or at least deluded. They’re not. They are suspending disbelief, just like they do with WWE. It’s not only entertaining; it’s comforting and familiar.
Want to know what comes next in “Trump World”? Better tune in to some WWE Smackdown to get the flow. Trump sees himself coming back in a cloud of smoke, crowds singing “proud to be an American”, and throwing Joe Biden over the ropes and slamming him out of the ring. Watch out for the folding chairs, Kamala!! But none of that is funny – because it so very real.
